Voting on the name of our annual awards ended at the weekend. We had some great suggestions from the community, and the winner- by a comfortable margin - was the Atlas Awards. Thank you to everyone who voted.
Now that we've settled on a name, it's time to get down to the serious business of nominating maps for the 1st Atlas Awards.
We've got ten categories, covering all sorts of mapping styles and genres. We recognise that there's a huge assortment of maps posted at the Guild on a daily basis, and we want to honour as many different mapping styles as we can.
The Categories
- Best Overall Map
- Best World Map
- Best Regional Map
- Best City, Town, or Dungeon Map
- Best Strategic, Encounter, or Board Game Map
- Best Hand-Drawn or Traditional Map
- Best Media-Ready Map
- Best Structure Map
- Best Space Map
- Most Creative Map
There are a few rules about nominating, which I've summarised below, but check out Diamond's intro thread for fuller information.
Eligibility
Any map posted in the Finished Maps folder between 1st January and 31st December, 2016 is eligible. Maps posted in other folders, e.g. challenge folders, WIP folders etc are not eligible for entry.
Up to two nominations per category
- If you only nominate once in each category, you must nominate another mapmaker's work. You cannot nominate one of your own maps.
- If you make two nominations per category, one must be for your own work, and one for someone else's. You cannot nominate two of your own maps, nor can you nominate two by other mapmakers. It must be one of yours and one of theirs!
Duplicate nominations
- If a map is already nominated in a particular category, you cannot nominate it again in that category. Every nomination will automatically be entered into the poll, so it's redundant to have the same map nominated twice. We want a diverse number of maps to make the voting more exciting. If someone already nominated your choice, just pick something else!
- On the other hand, if a map has been nominated in Category 'A', but you'd like to nominate it in Category 'B', that's acceptable (assuming it's not already listed for Category B). The same map can be nominated in different categories. It cannot be nominated twice in the same category. Duplicate nominations will be deleted.
Finding maps to nominate
UPDATE: We still don't have a gallery, but this link will show all Finished Maps from 2016. You'll have to open each thread individually, and right now there's no way around that, but this is a list of all eligible maps.
We're still trying to work out the optimal solution for this. At the moment, we don't have a gallery for 2016 maps, as our thumbnail scraper script doesn't seem to support this type of functionality. Currently, the best option is to tag your images with '2016' so that people can find them via search. See this post for information on what to do. We haven't exhausted all options yet, and if the situation changes, we'll update you.
Nominations are open till 26th Feb, so there's plenty of time to check through old threads and figure out your favourites.
Other rules and information
There are a few other requests from Diamond on how to submit your nominations. Please read his comment for more information. If you're unclear about any aspect of nominating, please ask a question in that thread.
Finally, don't be shy about nominating your own maps. It's not pushy or boastful to nominate yourself. We WANT you to nominate your own work! Only you, the artist, will truly know which piece you're most proud of from last year. Please don't let your best map languish in a buried forum thread, because someone forgot to nominate it. If you think it's your best, then it deserves its moment in the sun. Please share that with us.
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